Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shouto’s mother is beautiful. He loved her silky hair and her big grey eyes and the way she always smelled like salt and cold and vicious winter storms. He loved the way she held him and his siblings close in her arms and whispered to them stories of the ocean, loved the way she said, “Come here, pups, I have a tale to tell you.” when his father was long asleep and only their nature let them see in the meager light.

She was also very, very sad. He’s never seen her without tears making her eyes bright and liquid, maybe ever, and even when she smiled gently and told them how much she loves them, she was crying.

He’s not surprised Father broke her. He understands why she left, even though he’s still young and his face still hurts where she’d cast hot water on him. He can’t even hate her for it, even though it makes things harder for him and Fuyumi and Natsuo.

(Not for Touya. Touya was gone first. Burnt and broken and cast out like a bad catch. Even at five years old, Shouto can’t be surprised his mother broke, when his father had done that. )

***

His favorite story was the one about the seven tears. It’s a foolish, childish fairytale. He knows better. There will be no taste of salt and there will be no sad, kind eyes to look down on him, no gentle soul for him to cradle in his arms and comfort. 

That’s not what the future will hold for him. There will be nothing but taking, and taking, and taking, until he’s worn ragged and thin, just like his mother. 

He still likes that version better than the one his Father hopes for, the one where Shouto is the one doing the taking.

He hates that future for himself.

***

It starts like this.

Rei is young and curious and full of life and likes to sit on the rocks at the shore and watch the fishermen haul in their catch. She likes how they laugh and sing and carry around huge bundles of rope and net like it’s nothing.

Of course, she doesn’t think that one of them is watching back.

Todoroki Enji isn’t as foolish as the men he works with; he hasn’t got time for joking around when there’s work to be done and ambitions to achieve. He’s even clever enough to draw the connection between the pretty young woman who sits on the stones and watches and the pale silver seal that sprawls out on those same stones and sunbathes on days she isn’t there. He’d listened to the whispered stories about women who are seals and seals that take on the appearance of women.

He knows he can use her.

She knows the risks, of course she knows the risks, but when the young fisherman comes up to her, all she sees is his bleeding palm, and she thinks only of how she might be able to help him. In another life, perhaps her kindness would have been met with thanks and she would have slipped back into the water having made a friend. In this one, Enji reaches out with a bloodied hand and seizes the pelt around her shoulders. He commands her silent before she can even scream.

People talk, of course. A beautiful, shy stranger marrying into the village is always an event. Some say she’s just the daughter of a fisherman, although they can’t figure out who. Some say she’d travelled from far away before settling down on the coast, captivated by Enji’s broad shoulders and bold blue eyes. Some, when it’s late at night and they’re drunk enough to be ridiculed and sober enough to see the truth, shake their heads about the young Todoroki’s selkie bride and the curse she’s sure to bring.

Rei sits in her strange new house and looks out at the sea that she cannot return to (not yet, not quite yet, but she will, she must) and slowly chips away at the magic binding her to her husband.

***

The pelts keep them from resisting. 

They’re of Father’s blood, so he can’t command them directly like he had with Mother, but it still hurts when he twists and pulls and cuts the living skin, feels wrong to have him even hold it. And, well. They’d all been there for what happened to Touya.

(Yelling, and rage, and a dark silver pelt cast into the fireplace, and Touya on the ground, writhing and screaming, screaming, screaming as his skin bubbles and chars and blackens, and Fuyumi managed to fish his pelt out with a poker but he’s still and maybe it wasn’t fast enough, and Mother is screaming next, panicked and desperate and-)

Mother hadn’t been able to disobey, the same magic that binds them to their skins keeping her from lifting a finger against Father. There’s no geas on Shouto and his siblings. Their obedience simply comes from fear.

If they disobey as humans, he has their skin. If they disobey as seals, and refuse to shed their skin again, he can just take it out on a sibling, and as much as they all hate Father, they still care for each other.

Father finds it a convenient way to control them. After all, he sees children as things to sculpt into whatever their parents desire, and his children aren’t even human enough to justify sentiment. They’re hardly more than creatures to be trained into something valuable.

And Shouto is special. He’s supposed to be Father’s heir.

It had been Touya, at first. A perfect result to the experiment, a boy born with an impossible sealskin wrapped around his shoulders, something Father could make into a tool for both sea and land. But he’d been too wild, too stubborn to hide his sharp teeth or listen to petty human rules. And Father has always had a quick temper and violent anger.

He doesn’t care about Fuyumi and Natsuo. Fuyumi is a girl and a seal both, so at the very least he can use her to herd fish into nets and double his catch, and sell her pelt and her hand off to a suitor when she’s older. Poor Natsuo, born with a sealskin that doesn’t fit, isn’t anything more to him than a mouth to feed and an extra pair of hands he doesn’t have to pay.

But Shouto, Shouto is even more of a success than Touya. He’s an heir, a tool, and Father had learned through his failures and made Touya into an example, look what happens if you don’t behave ,  so Shouto listens. He obeys, but he hates Father with every hair on his pelt. He hates working the nets in the water or on deck, he hates the speeches about how he’ll gain power over the sea and land both, he hates the way Father keeps Natsuo’s sealskin at his belt and twists it when they don’t behave and makes him watch his older brother stiffen in pain for his mistakes.

He doesn’t resent his mother for leaving. He’s leaving too, the moment he can snatch Natsuo’s pelt away and he and his siblings can leave, and his father will die alone and forgotten and without a shred of the legacy he so badly wants to leave behind him.

But for now, he has to wait.

***

One of the little tolerances Shouto gets as the heir is that sometimes, if he times so that Father is in a good mood, and he ensures a good catch beforehand, he can slip away as a seal for a few hours. He’s careful to never leave it before he’ll be needed to help with fishing again, never to interfere so blatantly with Father’s successes, but he can get away with it. He’s too valuable to scare away.

Swimming, just for the thrill of it, is wonderful. His seal-self is quick and agile in the water, and he’s free to do whatever he pleases. He gives into his impulses in full, chasing fish or sticking his face in underwater caves just to explore or even sometimes playing with the true seals, chasing back and forth until he’s hot with exertion.

He loves it. He doesn’t even mind wearing his human face, when he’s out from under his father’s cold supervision. Shouto finds a rocky shore, too far from the village for anyone he knows to stumble on accidentally, and he returns to it again and again, slipping out of his pelt and just lying on sun-warm stone to rest before he has to return to his responsibilities as a Todoroki.

He gets careless.

It’s a stupid thing to forget himself, to forget what happened to his mother, how her mistake had ruined her life, but he does.

Shouto is in the habit of hiding his pelt when he explores the shore. There’s a hollow on top of a boulder that’s nearly impossible to see unless you’re practically standing on it, and if he weighs his pelt down with a stone, it’ll be safe as long as he doesn’t stray too far.

Except he’s all the way down at the far side of the tide pools, examining an anemone, and he feels fingers in his fur. It’s not like when his father or Fuyumi touches it- it shakes him right to his bones.

He runs.

Even before he gets there, the figure knelt on the boulder straightens up, staring at the thick drape of silver in his hands. Shouto wants to hit him, steal back his skin and disappear into the ocean. Something holds him back, though, and the jabbing pain of his magic turned against him shocks him enough to school his features back into something cold and indifferent.

“Give it back.” The wild part of him wants to snarl and bare his teeth in a vicious, inhuman threat, but Father has long taught him to hide his anger, disguise it as something bland and mundane.

The boy looks down at him with wide green eyes, and his jaw drops. 

“O-of course!” he chokes out, and it’s only when his face goes bright red that Shouto realizes he’s standing naked in front of a perfect stranger, but he’s too angry (at himself, at this naive boy, at his father for making him so desperate for freedom he’d get so sloppy the moment he can relax) to care about such human frivolities. 

The boy is reaching down to give Shouto his pelt when he freezes. “Oh. Oh, you’re a selkie.”

“Yes.” Shouto braces himself, and hopes that Father won’t hurt Fuyumi and Natsuo if this boy refuses to let him visit and explain his absence.

Instead of straightening back up and demanding Shouto’s obedience, the boy just looks at him with gentle, apologetic eyes. It’s strange. He’s never met someone who wouldn’t take such an obvious boon.

“I’m sorry.” He says, and offers Shouto his pelt. He takes it back, snatching it out of the other boy's hands. It smells like the ocean, and he wraps it around himself as tight as he can without letting it sink into his human flesh and change him back into a seal. Nothing about it feels different, and he mentally dismisses the myth that returning a selkie’s coat will make them your spouse.

“Thank you,” Shouto says. “I- thank you.”

“Don’t thank me! It’s your pelt! It’s part of you.”

He’s right. It’s strange that he’s right, because humans have a tendency to think of their pelts as something they own, something that can change hands like clothing. Even if they understand that selkies are born tied to their sealskin, they see the sealskins themselves as things to be owned. They’re not. They’re flesh and blood, a physical part of themselves that they can take on and off, and Shouto could no more own his pelt than he owns his hair.

But he’s also wrong, because his father has staked a claim on his pelt and Shouto is powerless to prevent it, and the myths about selkies and their pelts are not entirely wrong. 

“If someone owns the pelt, they own me. It’s me, but it’s not really mine.”

The boy looks like he wants to argue, wants to fight Shouto until he accepts his own power, but he doesn’t know what words might get him what he wants.

He likes this strange boy.

“What’s your name?”

“Ah-? I’m Izuku. Midoriya Izuku, but you can just- just call me Izuku.” 

“Hm.” Shouto nods, and there’s a long silence before Izuku asks, “Um, what’s your name?”

“Oh. Call me Shouto.”

“Nice to meet you, Shouto! I’m really sorry about your pelt, I didn’t know, and–”

“It’s fine. It was an accident.” Shouto shrugs. “Nothing happened, anyway.”

Izuku opens his mouth, before stopping himself. He seems to face some sort of internal debate, eyebrows knitting together and nose scrunching up just a bit. Shouto’s happy enough to idly stare while he waits for the other boy to speak. He has a spray of freckles across his cheeks. It’s cute.

After a long moment, Izuku blurts out, “I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve never met a selkie — or, never one I knew was a selkie, because I guess most of the time you can’t tell — and I’m so curious so canImaybeaskyousomequestionsaboutit?”

Shouto blinks. It takes more effort than he’s used to to untangle the rushed mess of words, but when he realizes what Izuku is asking for, he nods. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

The grin he gets in response is absolutely huge.

They spend a few hours together, and Izuku has questions about everything from his diet and sleeping habits to the way touches on his pelt correspond to his human body. He slips into a seal shape and back to human for him a few times, and lets the other boy prod him all over in each shape, even though he’s not too fond of getting touched. Izuku’s hands are gentle and he never does anything without warning Shouto first, though, so it’s a decent compromise to see how awed he looks when he realizes that Shouto’s teeth are just a little sharper than normal in human shape, or how the reddish spots on his pelt are totally natural.

By the time Shouto has to leave, he’s told Izuku more about himself than he’s ever said to the rest of the world combined, and knows more about Izuku than he does about anyone but his siblings. Izuku’s address is drilled into his memory so he can send him letters. 

He’s already a seal at the edge of the sea when Izuku yells, “Wait!”

Shouto pauses, and twists himself to look. 

“Just- I know it’s strange to say, but, if you ever need anything, you can come to me. I’ll do my best to help, Shouto!”

He can’t smile as a seal, but he nods, before he slips into the water and leaves.

It’s the first friend he’s ever had. Something that feels an awful lot like hope is growing in his chest, even as he swims back to Father and the life he hates.

***

They write. 

Izuku tells him about his days and his studies (both mundane and magic) and his mother. It’s a little taste of another life, and although Izuku isn’t free from worries, he’s content, and Shouto treasures the letters for the gift they are, right down to the smudges where Izuku had touched the ink before it dried.

In exchange, Shouto spills his soul out on paper, and it feels good, to tell someone else how he feels: about his father, about his ‘duty’, about being forced to play human when he’d rather disappear into the sea forever.

Here’s the thing; as much as Shouto looks like a human, talks like a human, knows the what and when and how of acting like a human, he is not human.

He’s not a seal, either.

He’s both and neither and his Father is a fool to think he can really control them, like they aren’t as wild and changing as the sea itself, a fool to think that their pelts are his just because he can separate those parts of them.

Izuku, though. Izuku listens, and he doesn’t see a man or a seal or even a selkie. He just sees Shouto, whole as he is, however he is.

Shouto carefully maintains his calm, placid veneer for the rest of the world, and tells Izuku alone about the fierce, wild thing that lurks under the surface. Part of him is worried he’ll scare his friend (his friend!) away one of these days.

But Izuku always replies.

***

It starts with a man who cares for nothing but himself and his power stealing a wife from the sea. It ends like this.

There’s a storm brewing. Father and Natsuo don’t seem to care, but Fuyumi and Shouto’s noses twitch. It smells… wrong.

Once they’re in the water, it should be easy to forget, but there’s no fish. It’s like all the other living things around them had fled. They want to leave. Fuyumi turns back into a human and begs Father to bring the boat back in, but he refuses, calls her a fool and a coward. He plants a foot on her shoulder and shoves her off the ladder, and she’s a seal before her head is under water. Shouto wants to bite the bastard.

He orders them to find a good catch, and when they can’t, he rages. He yells and threatens and twists Natsuo’s pelt before throwing it across the deck in frustration. Natsuo scrambles for it, and holds it close, because even if it gets taken back before they return, it’s a relief to have it with him.

So instead of heading back, Fuyimi and Shouto search in ever-widening loops around the boat for fish that aren’t there.

It takes far longer than it should for them to spot the other seal.

It’s a big bull, bigger than any Shouto’s ever seen. The seal darts around them, quick and easy while they focus on looking for fish, and Shouto swears he sees flashes of blue phosphorescence around it.

It seems almost like it’s waiting for them to do something.

The seal eventually loses patience, and goes right for them. Fuyumi gets sent spinning when he clips right by her and whips around to head towards Shouto. He makes a loop around him once, twice, and then, before he can react, nips his flippers with sharp teeth. Then, the seal is moving again, beelining to the boat. 

It’s the first time Shouto gets a good look at him, and it’s with a cold, dawning realization that he notices the seal’s skin is more bare, wrinkled scarring than fur.

By the time they get to the boat, an equally heavily scarred man is already climbing onto the Endeavor, pelt slung over his shoulder. Shouto doesn’t know what he expects, but it isn’t for the man to say, “Hey, Natsuo. You can still swim, right?”

Natsuo and Father are both frozen, staring at the man. Natsuo nods, and starts to reply before Father cuts him off.

“Yeah, I-”

“Who are you?”

By now, Shouto’s circled to the far side of the boat, and he can see the scarred man’s face twist and pull under metal rings as he gives Father a cruel, mocking smirk.

“Aw, c’mon,” He drawls out, “Can’t recognize your own son?”

Shouto can’t see Father’s face, but he can hear the cold anger in his tone when he says, “Touya.”

“I don’t go by that name anymore, old man.”

The smirk twists into a snarl, and the rings at the side of the man’s – his brother’s – mouth rip a little, sending little rivulets of blood down his face. 

“It’s Dabi, now.”

“What do you want, Touya?”

Dabi’s barking, manic laughter puts Shouto on edge, and he can see Natsuo flinch back into the rail. 

“Don’t be stupid. I’m here to get revenge. I hope it hurts, you fucking bastard.” 

Shouto thinks that Dabi is going to try and fight Father, when he lunges forwards. Instead, he yells, “NOW!” and his palm flares up blue, leaving a ghostly imprint on Father’s chest where he makes contact.

As the ocean suddenly starts to pitch and rage around them, the Endeavor already creaking under the strain, he looks Shouto in the eye, and says, same terrifying, manic expression on his face, “Take them and run , pup.”

And then, he’s gone, slipping off the side of the boat and into the violent sea.

Fortunately, Natsuo had thrown himself over the railing the instant Dabi lunged toward him, and Shouto darts forwards, grabbing his arm in his teeth and towing him away as fast as he can. He can’t find Fuyumi, and his eyes roll frantically as he fights the waves to get his brother away from what is quickly becoming the wreckage of a fishing boat. He can’t see her pale shape in the ocean, and all he gets a glimpse of is a figure with red eyes and far too many limbs, and he’s smart enough to recognize a sea witch when he sees one. 

The storm is vicious, and Natsuo might be able to swim, but he’s still human, and weighed down by his clothes and his pelt. Shouto’s just starting to think he can’t save them both when Natsuo yelps, and then it’s easier, because his sister has his other arm and they’re moving away from the Endeavor and Dabi and their Father. 

They make it to shore safely.

It’s still awkward, towing Natsuo between them, and it takes far longer than it would for Fuyumi and Shouto to go alone. They’re luckier than they could have been; the brunt of the storm is small, centered around the wreckage, and even if Natsuo can’t wear his skin properly, he’s selkie enough to withstand the cold water without any ill effects. 

A cold, satisfied whisper deep in Shouto’s mind reminds him that Father isn’t. Even if the wind and the waves and his brother don’t get to him, hypothermia probably will.

When Fuyumi pulls her skin back from her face, keeping it wrapped tight around her like a cloak, it’s obvious from her expression she’s thinking the same thing. Poor, kind Fuyumi even manages to look worried for the bastard.

“Do you think he’s…”

“Yeah. Or, if he’s not yet, he will be soon.”

“Natsuo!”

“It’s true, though.”

Fuyumi huffs, but she doesn’t try to argue. They just stand there for a long time, huddled close together, wrapped in sealskins that are theirs and theirs alone, with no one else trying to claim possession of them anymore. They must look strange; three lonely figures, drenched in seawater and rain, one in an ugly yellow slicker and the others in nothing at all underneath their furs. Shouto can’t decide which is worse.

“What do we do now?” Fuyumi asks. “We have the house, and money, but the boat…”

“Who cares? We’re free.” Natsuo says. He laughs, a harsh, joyful thing, and it suddenly feels real. 

Fuyumi bites her lip. She still looks worried, but there’s a brightness to her eyes that Shouto hasn’t seen in a long, long time. It reminds him of someone.

“I think I know somewhere we can go.”

They move through the house quickly, and pack light. A few sets of clothes each, any food they can conveniently bring, all the money they can find and the valuables that are easy to carry. A comb, carved out of mother-of-pearl and wrapped carefully in paper, to remember their mother. It all fits easily in the small dinghy, and they leave. 

Shouto gives a thought to burning the house down, but he dismisses it easily. It’s not worth their time to give the memories there so much effort. Better to let them rot in the salt air.

They leave, and none of them care enough to look back.

Between Fuyumi and Shouto, it’s easy work to tow the boat to the rocky shore, and then they’re carrying it ashore between three sets of strong arms, flipping it upside down to protect their belongings from the rain and wedging it securely against a boulder with a hollow at the top.

Shouto is too eager to bother with petty, irritating things like clothing, barely patient enough to properly wrap himself in his pelt. He’s racing ahead while Fuyumi tugs on a loose dress and Natsuo trips over loose stones, and he revels in the freedom and joy of running until his legs burn before he’s skidding to a stop in front of a modest home that he’s never been to before, but there’s a warm light from the window and two heads with familiar green hair in the kitchen.

When Midoriya Izuku opens the door, it’s to a sharp, honest grin and rain-soaked hair and skin, not human in the least and all the happier for it. 

“It’s mine now,” Shouto (and he decides it’s just Shouto, now, because what use does a creature of the sea have for a human’s name?) tells him, and there’s no question about what he means, when he looks comfortable in his skin in every way. 

And he’s met with an armful of a gleeful, crying boy, and his siblings are behind him, unsure but trusting, and he knows that they’ll be happy.

Izuku is honest to his core. He keeps his word, and helps them build up a new life.

***

In one village, residents are left speaking in hushed whispers about the Todorokis and a selkie’s curse come to fruition, a family torn apart so viciously by the sea. It becomes a cautionary tale, a warning for ambitious young fishermen who are too clever for their own good.

In another, the people gossip about the triad of newcomer siblings, about their strange beauty and the remarkable silver seals that started appearing at the same time. They treat them kindly, and say that a selkie’s favor is a powerful thing. It's a blessing, to have them settle in their village.

In a small, windswept house, there’s no nonsense about curses or blessings. Shouto and his siblings, for the first time, simply let themselves be , not as tools or seals or humans but as people with their own impulses and opinions and desires.

They laugh and sing and cry and shout and it’s not always perfect, but there’s no more fear or control and Shouto can do what he wants, whether it’s sleeping on sun-bleached rocks or learning to bake bread from Izuku or playing in the ocean until he’s exhausted and sore, and through it all he knows the people he cares about are happy and safe.

It’s not the taste of salt and sad, kind eyes and gentle soul for him to comfort, nothing like the fairytales he loved as a child. It’s something wild and strong and as shifting and predictable as the tides. 

He likes this better.